Data Centers (DCs) may comprise servers configured to transmit data to downstream hosts, such as end user devices, private network servers, etc. For example, server(s) may substantially simultaneously stream video and/or other live data to a plurality of hosts. The servers may be traditional servers and/or virtual machines (VMs) operating on computer hardware, for example in cloud based DCs. Substantially simultaneously streaming substantially identical data content to a plurality of hosts or other network nodes may be referred to as multicasting. Such data may be encoded in discrete packets and forwarded toward user terminals through the DCs core network. Multicast data packets may be routed through the core network using various techniques in the Operational Systems Interconnect (OSI) model data link layer and/or network layer, which may also be referred to as layer 2 and layer 3, respectively.